Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Lights Out in South Bend

Apparently, whenever the Notre Dame football team (or any Irish team) is ranked #1, there is a large #1 lit up over Grace Hall on the Notre Dame campus.

When Notre Dame backed into the number one spot by default, a crack team of engineers was called in to refit the old number one, last used in 1988, with modern electrical bulbs. In 1988, they had to wire the #1 as it previously was gas-lit.

Perhaps I jest, but the truth remains: Notre Dame football hasn't been relevant since the World War II era.

Is anyone really surprised by Monday night's blow-out loss to Alabama? Okay--anyone outside of Notre Dame and their ardent fans?

This is a team that should have lost to Stanford, but continued undefeated thanks to incompetence by the refs. Pitt should have beaten them as well, but a phantom PI kept the Irish alive to send the game into OT. They should have lost then as well, but Pitt failed to kick a chip shot field goal that would have sent Notre Dame tumbling out of the top ten. It still took three OTs for a team that went to the BCS Championship to beat Pitt. Hello, McFly? This ain't a good team.

There was ironic redemption in the first quarter as Notre Dame was the victim of a couple of questionable calls by the referees. In a way, you could call it payback, but it doesn't help Stanford or Pitt one bit. And when you look at the final score, 42-14, Alabama didn't need the help after all.

Oregon versus Alabama would have been a more entertaining game. Notre Dame versus Northern Illinois would have been a more competitive game, but the Irish might still have come up short.

There are only four "independents" in major college football: Notre Dame, Army, Navy and BYU. Only the Irish have a special clause to "guarantee" them a BCS bowl berth if the school is in the top 8 of the rankings.

Why is that?

Why is Navy not guaranteed a spot if the Midshipmen end up ranked 8th or higher?

Because Notre Dame won 4 Championships in the 1940's, they are given special consideration for bowl games?

Why isn't Notre Dame in a conference for football? We all know the bottom line is they don't want to share their NBC contract with anyone else, but they complain that they would lose historic and traditionl rivalries such Michigan, USC and Navy. So basically, for reasons that are somewhat obscure, Notre Dame continues to have the flexibility to schedule in the name of tradition at whim, while other schools watch traditional rivalries fade into the past, perhaps where they belong (Penn State-Pitt., Oklahoma-Nebraska,) because of conference commitments and financial constraints.

Seriously? How can Notre Dame be allowed to continue to hand pick their schedule, and take up space in bowls that other teams, better teams, are more deserving of?

1 comment:

I agree that Oregon would have been a better opponent for Alabama. Unfortunately, Florida, not Oregon, was next in line if Notre Dame had lost a game. That's Florida, which got humiliated by then 21st-ranked Louisville in the Sugar Bowl. Some years, things just don't work out.